Systems consisting of a head machine and subsequent treatment device for processing pieces of dough are well-known in commercial and industrial baking technology.
The head machine consisting of a dough divider and a dough shaper or rounder has an operating speed which has to be coordinated with one or more fully automatic or semiautomatic subsequent treatment devices, for example a fermenting chamber, a baking oven, a dough roller, or the like.
Different drive systems are known in this field that vary from a central drive for the entire system equipped with a chain or universal drive and clutch, and individual drive means for each machine that can be turned on and off by spring-loaded brakes or high-power clutches, or drives that turn off the power supply to a high speed electric drive motor by means of costly electronic systems involving speed comparison, for making the entire system run synchronously and deliver the dough pieces precisely from one stage to the next.
In order to provide economical production, it is necessary for such dough-processing systems to be able to process different types of dough and different size of dough pieces. However, this necessarily results in changed cycle times for the head machine, which, for example, become necessary when fermentation times in the fermentation chamber are changed, different doughs with different dough consistency are utilized, or a different treatment device follows the head machine.
The change of cycle time of the head machine is achieved by a speed change, e.g. in the gear transmission or by shortening or lengthening the pauses between transport strokes of the conveyor piston of the dough divider which presses the dough into the measuring chambers thereof. The compressive pressure of the conveyor piston is in the fact designed to be adjustable by spring elements or hydraulic systems corresponding to the particular type of dough, but since the conveyor piston reaches its cycle frequency immediately, the total pressure is developed immediately and is instantaneously transmitted to the dough. Such systems can be driven synchronously and periodically to process dough pieces and are described, for example, in DE-PS 37 20 495 and DE-PS 32 34 487.
The head machine described in DE-PS 32 34 487 comprises a dough divider and rounder of drum design. The dough pieces are delivered by this head machine in successive rows and are transferred by distributor belts to an operating belt. At the end of the operating belt, the dough pieces are transferred to a conveyor belt therebelow equipped with product carriers. The advance of the conveyor belt is variably controllable by its own drive motor which is turned on by a switch during the passage of each row of dough, and is turned off again after a certain interval. A series of plate cams is provided on a control shaft for this purpose, each of which acts in combination with a control switch that is controllable through a program switch. The separation of the dough pieces on the product carrier can thereby be changed and thus the system can be adapted easily to different type of dough pieces depending on the output of the head machine.
The drive control of the head machine in this case is not adjustable and is not combined with an exact placement of the dough pieces on the product carrier. A drawback here is that several intermediate transport devices and transfer devices are necessary for transferring the dough pieces from the distributor belts of the head machine into the fermentation chamber and thus inaccuracies and relatively high wear necessarily result.